Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59, No.2

About this episode

This episode explores Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2, highlighting its significance and revolutionary nature within the string quartet repertoire.

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony. Well, how about this one: how many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end in a minor key? The answer? Just one, Op. 59, No. 2, the subject of today's show. And that minor key is hugely important to this darkest of the three Op. 59 quartets, three towering achievements that changed the string quartet repertoire for good. Beethoven, as I've said many times on the show, was a revolutionary within limits, always expanding, rethinking, and reshaping what was possible without breaking anything beyond repair. But make no mistake: the Op. 59 quartets were revolutionary works. No one had written anything like them before in terms of scope, emotional intensity, difficulty, and complexity. In fact, like a few of Beethoven's greatest works, they were received with confusion and, in some cases, anger by musicians, audiences, and critics. Famously, the cellist of the first string quartet to receive the parts of Op. 59, No. 1 saw the Morse code-like, one-note theme of the second movement…

People in this episode

Host: Joshua Weilerstein

Topics covered

• Beethoven
• string quartets
• classical music
• musical analysis
• composer trivia

Keywords

• Beethoven
• string quartet
• Op. 59, No. 2
• classical music
• musical trivia
• Mendelssohn
• quartet analysis

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59, No.2, Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony

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